Fishless Cycling

[backtotropical]

377L tank - how many fish roughly (average size but with say 3 Angels and 5 Clownies).....? I currently have simple Guppys/Plattys and Mollies and 2 Clowies. (oh and 70 fry.....to be moved to new tank soon)

Be careful, you need to stock your tank slowly.

When fishless cycling, you build a bacteria culture larger than could be required by a tank of fish, so can fully stock the tank instantly once cycled, with bacteria to spare.

With a fish-in cycle (like yours), you are only creating enough bacteria to cope with the waste that is currently produced in your tank. If you now add too many fish at once, the bio-load on the filter will increase before the bacteria can multiply to take care of it. The result is an ammonia spike. This is why you need to stock slowly.

Think of it proportionally and you should be fine. eg. if you only had 2 guppies and then added 10 more, thats increasing the waste produced in the tank by 500%. Not a good idea.

If however you had 10 guppies and added 2 more, thats only increasing the bio-load by 20% and your filter will cope with that fairly quickly.

Hope that makes sense.

Cheers

 

[Bungy]

377L tank - how many fish roughly (average size but with say 3 Angels and 5 Clownies).....? I currently have simple Guppys/Plattys and Mollies and 2 Clowies. (oh and 70 fry.....to be moved to new tank soon)

Be careful, you need to stock your tank slowly.

When fishless cycling, you build a bacteria culture larger than could be required by a tank of fish, so can fully stock the tank instantly once cycled, with bacteria to spare.

With a fish-in cycle (like yours), you are only creating enough bacteria to cope with the waste that is currently produced in your tank. If you now add too many fish at once, the bio-load on the filter will increase before the bacteria can multiply to take care of it. The result is an ammonia spike. This is why you need to stock slowly.

Think of it proportionally and you should be fine. eg. if you only had 2 guppies and then added 10 more, thats increasing the waste produced in the tank by 500%. Not a good idea.

If however you had 10 guppies and added 2 more, thats only increasing the bio-load by 20% and your filter will cope with that fairly quickly.

Hope that makes sense.

Cheers

Sounds like a plan - thanks again you are a great help. Id like to add 3 Angels next.

 

[*blacksnapemoor*]

thank you i finally no what use are on about lol

 

[stealthscope]

I have a ten gal tank that I had for over a year now, I am planning on getting a new filter for that tank and have a new 55 gal tank. Can I let the old filter run in the 55gal with the new filter for a while? Will that help speed the process?

Also the people at petsmart told me that all I have to do after I put water in my tank is get solution that gets rid or ammonia and nitrate and wait 24hrs and then I can put in my fish. If the nitrate spikes all I have to do is use the solution again to lower it. What do you think of that method??

 

[charlie4486]

^that method sounds terrible. hahahaha. that's why i don't listen to pet stores. you could definitely let the new filter sit in. or you could just put some of the mature media in the new filter and put that in the 55. it will definitely help speed up the process.

 

[freckles]

where can i buy pure ammonia from to cycle my new tank, tryed b&q and tesco they both looked at me as if i was mad when i asked if they got any and then when i told them what it was for they had a glased look in their eye!

 

[freckles]

brilliant page and thanks to this i now know where to find ammonia to cycle my new tank, why dont local fish shops sell ammonia?

 

[salmanq]

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[Merithyn]

Okay, getting frustrated here.

I added ammonia four days ago now, and it hasn't seemed to go down at all since then. I also added substrate from an established tank. How long does it take before there is any kind of change in things??

EDIT: Nevermind. I just read this thread and found out that I'm horribly impatient. I promise, I'll be more patient.

 

[jdstephe]

Great article - and I thought I was making progress until I saw the part about "surfactants" in the ammonia. I didn't see this initially and the ammonia I bought from Walmart contains only Ammonium hydroxide and surfactants. It foams when you shake it - BUT - it seems to work!!

I added some of this solution up to about 5-6ppm and followed the instructions, waiting until the levels dropped back to about 1ppm before adding more back to the 3-4ppm range. My 10gal tank will now process this 3-4ppm back to 0ppm ammonia in about 6-8 hours.

I'm still in the phase with nitrites off the chart high, and I haven't bothered with nitrate yet, but I know some are present.

My question is this - I think I am still about a week away from the nitirites dropping back to zero in the less than 12 hours recommeded timing. Given this, should I be looking to change my ammonia source for one without surfactants, or is everything OK? Could the suractants be preventing the proper formation of the nitrite eating bacteria?

As a newbie, I originally didn't know about all this stuff, and had a pleco placed straight in the tank. When I started seeing ammonia problems, I pulled it out and am keeping it in a hospital tank with daily water changes until the proper tank cycles. As you can imagine, I am keen to get it back in its proper tank as soon as possible.

Your help and advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Adie]

Quick question RE: cycling.

Doing a fishless cycle on my new 180l, ammonia was being processed in 12 hours within 7 days thanks to some mature media I added.

However, things seem to have stalled. 3 Weeks later my Nitrite is off the scale (and has been since day 8) but not dropping, my Nitrate is only around 10-20ppm and does not seem to be moving up indicating that the nitrite is not being processed? Has the process stalled due to too much nitrite being in the water? Would a large water change help at all?

 

[rdd1952]

I would say things have definitely stalled. I would do a large water change, 75% or larger, so that the ntrite is actually at a readable level again. Then add only about 2ppm of ammonia and see what that does. Only add about 2ppm once a day and see if the nitrite starts to drop and the nitrate starts to rise.

 

[sj ponder]

Hello. It's been 8 days since we started, and ammonia seems to be stuck at 4ppm. At least that's what it's been at for the last 2 days. We didn't measure it before that, except when we started. The starting concentration should have been 5-6ppm based on the amount of ammonia we added. (Couldn't get a good initial readout, since our API kit has a color chart reading for 4ppm and 8ppm, but nothing in between).

Temp is 82deg and have water circulating at max flow rate thru the AquaClear 20 filter.

Based on what I've read, I was expecting for our ammonia level to have dropped lower by now. Am I being too impatient?

 

[rdd1952]

I would suggest raising the temperature. Bacteria reproduction is much faster at higher temperatures. Bring it up to the upper 80s or even low 90s. Since it seems to have stalled, you may want to do a partial water change (about 50%). Do you have a reading for nitrite yet?

 

[sj ponder]

I would suggest raising the temperature. Bacteria reproduction is much faster at higher temperatures. Bring it up to the upper 80s or even low 90s. Since it seems to have stalled, you may want to do a partial water change (about 50%). Do you have a reading for nitrite yet?

At the 82deg set point, the heater is on pretty much all of the time. We've a 20gal tank with a 100W heater, but the house gets pretty cold (50-55deg) at times. Don't actually have a thermometer yet, so not exactly sure if it is 82deg or not. I've seen the heater go off once briefly, so I'm guessing that it is close.

There is a slight nitrite reading between 0 and 0.5 - that's all the resolution we have on this test (we're calling it 0.4).

What would be the purpose of a 50% water change? If this were done, I assume we'd have to add more ammonia to bring the concentration back up to 5-6ppm?